What’s in a name? Apparently a lot, in a city known for nasty political fights over the tiniest of issues.

The latest kerfuffle is whether to allow the oft-derided Robert F. Kennedy Democratic Club to change its name — after an insistence that the club change its name.

The club was chartered a year ago by the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee and now has 315 members who meet multiple times a week to discuss politics, perform community service, and staff phone banks to pressure Republican voters in other states to tell their congressional representatives to support keeping the Affordable Care Act.

You know, pretty scary stuff.

Progressives don’t like the fact that the club raises a lot of money for what it deems corporate interests. Last year, the club raised more than $900,000, much of it from tech titans and the real estate industry. It used the money to support mostly moderate candidates for local office and back the controversial Proposition Q, which passed last year and allows police to remove tent camps if shelter space is available.

When progressive Chronicle columnist David Talbot alerted Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the son of Bobby Kennedy, about the club’s use of his father’s name, the foundation named for the senior Kennedy wrote a letter to the club’s co-founder, Justin Jones, asking him to change the moniker.

The club wasn’t sure what to do, until Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a proponent of the discredited theory that vaccines cause autism, began working with President Trump on that issue. Trump has often said he, too, thinks vaccines cause autism. Of course he does.

Jones said the club started getting hate mail about being associated with a prominent “antivaxxer.”

“At that point, we decided it would be best to honor the family’s wishes and make the switch,” Jones said.

The club decided to name itself the United Democratic Club in hopes of bringing progressive and moderate Democrats together to fight the real enemy: the Trump administration.

Not so fast. The club wants to be rechartered under its new name at the Wednesday meeting of the DCCC, but progressives are balking. Supervisor Aaron Peskin believes the club shouldn’t be chartered at all and that it should be considered what it really is, a political action committee that’s all about raising money for its preferred candidates and measures.

“They have every right to go raise dirty money as they see fit,” Peskin said. “But I am adamant that clubs that are chartered by the local Democratic Party aren’t slush funds for corporate interests.”

He has a particular bone to pick with the group for taking money from the San Francisco Police Officers Association, which has opposed key elements of police reform and gave money to the San Francisco Republican Party last year. (Yes, there is a San Francisco Republican Party.)

If Peskin is successful in rounding up enough votes to reject the club — which almost never happens in a city full of Democratic clubs — Jones’ club can continue to exist; it just won’t have the city’s Democrats’ seal of approval.

Last week’s column asking why the San Francisco Unified School District hasn’t made any progress after promising to build teacher housing for 13 years piqued the interest of two city supervisors who are often on opposite sides of the aisle.

Unbeknownst to each other, progressive Hillary Ronen and moderate Ahsha Safai planned after reading the column to call for a hearing on the delay. Now they’re teaming up to ensure that school district officials, teachers union leaders and staff in the Mayor’s Office of Housing come to the board chambers at 4 p.m. on March 22 with some answers.

Why the shared interest? It’s my interest too: young kids in public school. Kids need teachers, but there are currently 22 public school classrooms without permanent ones. There’s a teacher shortage nationally, but it’s exacerbated here by sky-high housing prices.

Ronen will learn from the school district next month where her 4-year-old daughter, Maelle, is assigned to attend transitional kindergarten. Safai’s daughter, Xol, 6, is in first grade at Daniel Webster Elementary, and his son, Rumi, 5, will start kindergarten there in August.

Safai said his daughter’s kindergarten teacher emailed parents last year, saying, “Can anyone help me find a home?” One parent knew of available, inexpensive housing, but many teachers aren’t so lucky.

Ronen said during last week’s board meeting, “I am truly worried that by the time my child gets into a public school next year, there will not be enough teachers. ... That’s unacceptable in a world-class city like San Francisco.”

You can take the politician out of San Francisco, but you can’t take the San Francisco out of the politician.

State Sen. Scott Wiener, the former city supervisor representing the Castro district, now spends much of his time in Sacramento, which isn’t exactly a hotbed of gay nightlife. Wiener is still having fun, though, through the Gay Boys Caucus.

That’s an unofficial offshoot of the official LGBT Caucus, which has an all-time high of eight members out of 120 members of the state Legislature. Wiener is backing legislation with other caucus members to have a bill of rights for gay seniors living in long-term care centers and to eliminate outdated parts of the penal code that target those living with HIV.

While the legislation is serious, the caucus has its fun, too. The four lesbian members have partners, but all four gay men are very single and have dubbed themselves the Gay Boys Caucus.

On Valentine’s Day, the four decided to be one another’s Valentines, and each wore T-shirts with the name of a “Sex and the City” character. Surprisingly, the buttoned-up, wonky Wiener was dubbed Samantha, the TV show’s sexpot.

“Well, first, I’m the oldest of the four, and I’m a single gay guy from San Francisco. Read into that what you will,” Wiener said, laughing. “We’re all surprising in our own ways.”

Heather Knight is a columnist working out of City Hall and covering everything from politics to homelessness to family flight and the quirks of living in one of the most fascinating cities in the world. She believes in holding politicians accountable for their decisions or, often, lack thereof – and telling the stories of real people and their struggles.